


Musoukyou

by HamHamHeaven



Series: Tanbinaru Shi no Shoukei [2]
Category: Angelo (Band), D'espairsRay, Jrock, lynch. (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Amphibian Asanao (lynch.), Capital Punishment, Imprisonment, Karyu (Angelo | D'espairsRay) Has Wings, M/M, Seppuku, Solitary Confinement, only not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-06-14 13:20:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15389625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HamHamHeaven/pseuds/HamHamHeaven
Summary: After seven cycles in isolation, Asanao is finally given a chance at redemption.





	Musoukyou

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the DW vkyaoi July challenge - spotlighting a drummer. This plot is not a happy plot. Please read the tags and proceed at your own risk.  
> 

Asanao lay flat on his back, left arm tucked up under his head, staring unseeingly at the flat brown ceiling of his cell.  The chill of the air made the webbing between his digits ache, and he could almost feel the recycled air leaching the moisture from his skin.  He glanced over at the small half-empty tank of greenish gel embedded in the wall – his liquid ration for the day – and debated whether his thirst outweighed his lethargy enough to warrant the expenditure of energy to retrieve a bowlful of the distasteful substance.

It was, like everything else in that miserable place, designed to keep him alive and healthy, while providing as little comfort as possible.  The aridness, the perpetual chill, the harsh dichotomy of blinding “day” and obscure “night”: all in stark contrast to the balmy humidity and diffuse light of his home planet.  Even the liquid gel with its unpleasant mineral aftertaste and the bland crumbly wafers that took the place of food were the exact opposite of textures he would have chosen if given an option.  Though after – what was it?  Seven cycles? – he was more or less used to the privation.

He shifted slightly, drawing the thin blanket a bit higher over his bare body.  The unyielding metal against his back made him long for the home he’d once known, and the warm plushness of the bed he’d once shared with his mate.  Asanao hastily turned away from thoughts of the downy soft fur covering his mate’s lithe body, of translucent blue wings shimmering in the twilight, quivering with pleasure as he…

 

A sharp zap of electricity shot through Asanao’s soles.

 

He grimaced, bending his knees to draw his feet away from the wall and wiggling his toes to dissipate the unpleasant sting from the membranes.  That was all part of his sentence, too.  Any sort of strong emotional response – be it anger, sorrow, or lust – was met with a fiery jolt.  Asanao had no idea what would happen if a person wouldn’t or couldn’t control his feelings; he’d never risked finding out.

He still remembered the single meeting he’d been permitted with his advocate.  She hadn’t bothered to pretend he wouldn’t be convicted; they’d both known it wasn’t a question of “if” but merely “when”.  Instead, she’d explained the procedure of trial, transport, and imprisonment.  As she’d stood to go, she had congratulated him on his being captured by a _civilized_ species.

“If it had been your people,” she had declared, “You would have been executed by now.”

Asano closed his eyes and thought, not for the first time, how very backward it all was that granting someone a quick, honourable death was considered a cruelty, while leaving them to languish 14, 21 cycles alone and wretched was deemed “just”.

 

The lights overhead flashed twice, and then the door to his cell slid open.  Asanao heaved a sigh and sat up with a grunt, swinging his legs out wide of the latrine pan with practiced ease.  He shuffled unhurriedly through the doorway out into the corridor and followed the lighted path to the left.  No point in attempting to go down the darkened passage to the right.  His toes still tingled with the result of his _last_ breach of protocol.

About 20 meters further along was another doorway opening onto the wide rectangular room he’d come to think of as “the gymnasium”.  It was empty, of course, and no one else ever joined him.  But every other day, he was directed there and made to… allowed to?... stretch his limbs.  He could walk as slowly or run as quickly as he liked.  Push-ups, crunches, acrobatic jumping and tumbling – none of those exertions earned him punishment here as they would have in his cell.  Only if he refused to move at all would the electrical penalty be applied.

Because increased heartrate and respiration levels were foreseeable with the physical exertion, Asanao could get away with thoughts of his mate in the gymnasium.  He succumbed but rarely, and _always_ with a healthy dose of guilt following.  To be indulging in something so sacred and beautiful, meant for himself and his mate alone, there where _anyone_ might observe, might mistake him for nothing more than an animal in rut, or The Maker forbid might take some perverse pleasure of their own at his actions.  And yet, there were times when he _had_ to give in to the memories; the alternative was madness.

 

Asanao wandered invisible paths across and around the room, lost in thoughts of the past before he’d fallen.  Before he’d brought disgrace and destruction to everything and everyone he loved.  He ground his teeth against the shame, stronger than any corrective measure his captors might employ, and the bitterness of having been denied the chance to make amends.

_Forgive me, Beloved.  I may be a failure, but I swear to you I’m not the coward they would have me seem._

 

Eventually, the lights flashed once more, directing him back through the door by which he had entered.  He braced himself at the threshold for the decontamination shower. The high-pitched whine made his tympanic membranes throb painfully and his vision blur.  All that discomfort just to get clean. Thank The Maker it only lasted a few seconds.

He lumbered back along the corridor, shivering slightly with the residual vibrations and unpleasantly cold temperature.   What he saw when he reached the opening of his cell froze him in his tracks.

_His mate!_

Swathed in filmy black cloth, wings pressed half-closed behind him for lack of space, the beautiful creature sat perched at the foot of the sleeping ledge, pale body weirdly luminescent under the artificial lights.  Asanao was so stunned by what he was convinced _had_ to be a hallucination that he didn’t even feel the first two corrective shocks to his feet.  The third, however, caused him to yelp and jerk forward into the room.  The door immediately slid closed behind him, and suddenly gentle arms were enfolding him.

“Karyu?” he whispered, afraid to break the magical spell that had caused his mate to appear before him.  “Is it really you?”

“Who else would it be, my love?”

True.  Who else _could_ it be?  Not even in Asanao’s most intense fantasies did Karyu seem so real.  And the lingering sweetness of nectar in his scent, the delicate brittleness of his exoskeleton beneath Asanao’s palms, the contented purr emanating from his narrow chest were all details too intimate to be faked.

“Did you think I’d forgotten you, my love?  Abandoned you?”

Asanao’s fingers trailed shakily up his mate’s spine between the wing joints.  They trembled excitedly under his touch.

“No, not abandoned,” he denied.  “I could never ascribe such dishonourable behaviour to you.  But I thought… perhaps they’d not informed you of my arrest.  Or had refused to let you see me.”

Karyu drew back to place a flutter of kisses on the captive’s face.

“They tried.  Oh, yes, they tried to keep me from you.  But they could not deny me my rights forever.  We are mates, after all.  Even to these brutes, that is a sacred bond.”

Asanao’s joy and wonder at their reunion disappeared.

“I’m so sorry, Beloved,” he murmured, falling to his knees as best he could in the narrow space.  “I failed you.  If only I had….”

His numerous confessions were silences by soft lips against his own.

“Hush.  What’s done cannot be undone.  Let us not waste the few precious moments we have with words.”

In silence, Karyu drew Asanao to his feet only to press him back, first sitting then lying on the metal bunk.  At first, Asanao hesitated, mindful of electrocution, but the only shocks he received were those of pleasure created by his beloved’s skilful ministrations.  So he closed his eyes and indulged in his mate’s kisses.  Revelled in every touch and sigh after _so_ long without the contact of another living creature. 

There was a quiet rustle of wings, and then a strange tightness filled Asanao’s chest.

“Karyu,” he gasped.

He opened his eyes slowly, staring up into the fathomless depths of Karyu’s gaze.

“Rest in eternal freedom, my love,” Karyu murmured against Asano’s lips.  “Your debt is paid.  All your transgressions absolved.”

The ghost of a smile played on the prisoner’s face as he felt the slender metal blade withdrawn from between his ribs.

“Thank you, Beloved.  Come claim what is yours.”

Slowly, reverently, Karyu stole the final breath from Asanao’s lungs with a kiss.

**Author's Note:**

>  **1)** Story takes its title from a Kagrra song: 夢想境 Border of Reverie.  
>  **2)** Karyu's physiology is based on that of a [moth](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e8/66/95/e86695c1ee7a6fa508892405a619efaa.jpg). Asanao's is vaguely amphibian.  
>  **3)** I don't actually know what crime(s) Asanao committed. Neither he nor Karyu would tell me. All I could get from him was that his punishment was exactly what he deserved, though I get the feeling that the reason he won't elaborate is that I would disagree with him if he did.


End file.
